Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi read a statement saying he has no plans to resign and had a cordial discussion with the mayor. In background is his spokesperson Susan Fahey. San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi appeared outside his City Hall offices to say he has no plans to resign his job.

Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle

Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi read a statement saying he has no plans to...

Image 2 of 3

Suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi leaves his domestic violence class orientation at the Hall of Justice in San Francisco, Calif., March 22, 2012.

Mayor Ed Lee is suspending Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi and appointing veteran law enforcement official Vicki Hennessy to take his place which he announced at his office at city hall in San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday, March 20, 2012.

Former ethics commissioners say the panel is more than capable of rendering a fair decision, but critics say that if its past work is any indication, observers shouldn't expect a very inspiring performance.

The five-member commission is perceived by some as notoriously slow, and it has never recommended the removal of anyone from office for official misconduct. Some critics also have accused the commission of watering down or ignoring rules governing campaign finance, lobbyists and public disclosure of documents, while others say it has lacked the courage to make hard decisions.

A recent report by the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury described the Ethics Commission as "the sleeping watchdog" and slammed it for several practices, including relying too much on advice from its executive director and drastically reducing its set fines for breaking campaign finance rules whenever politicians' lawyers or lobbyists ask it to.

Former commission Chairwoman Susan Harriman called allegations of bias or manipulation "just nonsense."

"I think we treated everybody fairly," she said.

Deflecting criticism

John St. Croix, the commission's executive director, said much of the criticism is off base and politically motivated. But he noted that for years he had just one investigator and has limited staff to handle broad responsibilities, including overseeing campaign finance reporting, regulating lobbyists, auditing campaigns that get taxpayer money, and investigating ethics complaints.

An in-house analysis last year indicated the commission would need to almost double its staff of 16 to handle the current workload, but St. Croix said the estimate is now slightly lower.

Still, the last time a high-profile case of official misconduct came before it - when then-Mayor Gavin Newsom suspended Supervisor Ed Jew in 2007 for lying about living in San Francisco - the Ethics Commission spent more than two months deciding the procedures for the hearing. Jew, who is now in prison, resigned before the ethics hearing took place.

Harriman said the lengthy time frame in the Jew case was at the request of attorneys on both sides knowing that a criminal case was pending.

"It would have been very unfair to move ahead of those criminal proceedings," she said.

A balancing act

Eileen Hansen, who served on the commission from 2005 to 2011, said the criticism about the body is fair. She has also been outspoken in saying that the current panel should not find Mirkarimi guilty of official misconduct. She said the commission in theory is "critically important" in such a politically active city.

But in reality, she said, it's a body that meets once a month and almost always sides with the lobbyists and political consultants it's supposed to regulate.

"Our Ethics Commission in San Francisco could be a very proactive body in challenging laws and setting the bar for the rest of the country," she said. "But there was little to no interest in having that perspective.

"It would take strong leadership among the commission and the staff to take on the big fish in San Francisco - the very large lobbyists and political consultants."

St. Croix countered that most political professionals are "proactively interested in following the law," and those that don't are often new to San Francisco's "very complex" legal requirements.

"The Ethics Commission's biggest critics are believers in 'gotcha government,' " St. Croix said. "We're focusing on education. The more we educate and teach people, the less likely is it that they are going to make mistakes. It also lets them know that we're watching."

Harriman said Hansen's suggestions for challenging monied political interests often ran afoul of U.S. Supreme Court decisions or other case law.

Yielding to power

Ironically, some of the commission's staunchest opponents are those who fought for its creation. Count among those Larry Bush, once a senior aide to former Mayor Art Agnos who now writes the CitiReport political blog, which often flays the commission. He and Agnos are among Mirkarimi's dwindling group of supporters.

Bush helped draft the ballot measure creating the commission, which voters approved in 1993. The idea was to establish an independent group with its own staff to banish corruption and pay-to-play politics at City Hall.

But instead, Bush said, the volunteer commissioners - appointed by the mayor, the board, the assessor, the city attorney and the district attorney - bow to the will of City Hall operatives.

"The commission has always done what people in power want it to do," said Marc Salomon, a good-government activist and frequent critic of the commission.

That's a common refrain from a small but vocal clique on the city's political left that is simply untrue, St. Croix said.

"There is a double standard," he said. "If you go after someone that they support, it's an abuse of power, but if you don't go after their political adversaries, you're not doing your job."

Four of the five current commissioners are attorneys; the one who isn't, Beverly Hayon, is a retired media specialist reappointed by Mayor Ed Lee.

The commissioners are appointed by people they're supposed to oversee, and the agency's budget is set by the mayor and the board, critics point out. Other bodies with enforcement authority also have their budgets set that way, including the district attorney, police and city attorney.

Attorney Steven Gruel argued during the maneuvering over Jew's removal that it was inappropriate for the commission to hear the matter because commissioners were appointed "at the behest of people who have filed charges against Supervisor Jew," according to the meeting minutes.

Hansen, who was on the commission at the time, said the panel "will use its moral compass to make its decision," according to the minutes.

Harriman, former commission Chairwoman Emi Gusukuma and current Chairman Benedict Hur all said their appointing official had never contacted them about matters before the commission.

'Uncharted territory'

The commission has said little about the Mirkarimi case or how it will be conducted.

The volunteer group must hold a hearing on whether the sheriff should be removed for official misconduct after he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment in an incident where he allegedly grabbed his wife's arm hard enough to bruise it during an argument on Dec. 31. Lee filed official misconduct charges March 21 alleging the misdemeanor conviction was incompatible with Mirkarimi's job as sheriff.

The Ethics Commission must decide whether to recommend Mirkarimi's removal to the Board of Supervisors, where nine of 11 votes would be needed to oust him.

Whatever the outcome, the decision will be scrutinized.

Oliver Luby, an Ethics Commission staffer for nine years before he was laid off in 2010, said that, if history is any guide, the commission will probably side with Lee.

"I would assume it'll be a kangaroo court," Luby said. "It's probably a done deal. But who knows - maybe somebody will attempt to be objective."

Hur said the panel is there "to call balls and strikes, not to be political."

"We are committed to providing as fair a process as we reasonably can to Mr. Mirkarimi with the requisite due process," Hur said. "We recognize that this is somewhat uncharted territory."

Noteworthy commission cases

Since voters approved it in 1993, the Ethics Commission has had its share of critics. Here are some of the most controversial cases:

Tony Hall: In what was perceived as a flop for the agency's investigative staff, the commission upheld only two of six campaign-finance charges against former Supervisor Tony Hall in December 2008. Hall, facing a maximum fine of $240,000, was fined $6,000 for using campaign money to pay for family gifts, gas and automobile expenses. The commission did not find enough evidence to prove that Hall had paid for part of his daughter's wedding with a $12,000 loan from aide Olivia Scanlon and then repaid her with campaign funds.

The ethics investigator seemed to have difficulty with some basic rules of procedure and evidence during Hall's hearings. Commissioners noted that Hall might have been found in violation of more ethics counts had the charges been drafted differently.

Sunshine requests: According to a San Francisco Civil Grand Jury report, the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force asked the Ethics Commission to enforce 18 violations against city officials from October 2004 to December 2010 regarding San Francisco's strict open government laws, such as providing public documents upon request.

The commission dismissed all 18, the report said. Ethics Commission Executive Director John St. Croix said the cases didn't rise to the level of willful misconduct, often because there were mistakes such as a misplaced document or because the city attorney's office advised that the documents were exempt from disclosure.

In July, the Ethics Commission finally took action in a case referred by the sunshine group. The commission agreed that Jewelle Gomez, president of the Library Commission, broke the law by shouting down a public speaker at a meeting. But the Ethics Commission said it couldn't do anything about it because she was a volunteer appointee and not on the city payroll.

It wrote a letter to Mayor Ed Lee asking him to consider removing her. Lee had senior staff admonish Gomez, according to a spokesman, and she kept her position.

Yet a recording of a February meeting of the Library Commission includes Gomez talking into a microphone left on after the meeting's adjournment, saying she could "f- bury" a man who spoke during public comment.

"I did grow up in the ghetto, and I used to carry a straight razor," she continues. She later told The Chronicle she felt threatened by the man's allusion to political assassination, though he says it was a literary device.

Fines: The Ethics Commission arbitrarily assesses fines on politicians running for office, lobbyists and others who fail to properly document donations received and money spent, according to a civil grand jury report. The report said the fines, often lowered if the person in question cooperates, are "most irregular and vulnerable to manipulation against the public interest."

Perhaps the most infamous case stemmed from the 2002 defeat of a public power ballot measure by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., where the utility failed to report spending $800,000 on the campaign. Ultimately a settlement of $100,000 was reached in 2004.

On the other side, the treasurer for San Franciscans for Affordable Clean Energy, Carolyn Knee, was fined $26,700. Knee is a senior citizen living on a fixed income. The fine got the attention of the New York Post, which said the commission was "bullying some campaigns." Eventually, the commission settled with Knee in 2007 for $267.

Ed Lee's mayoral run: In August, shortly after Lee declared his candidacy, the Ethics Commission took the unusual route of bucking Executive Director John St. Croix's recommendation and voting unanimously that workers on the "Run, Ed, Run" campaign to persuade Lee to run for a full term could work on his mayoral campaign. Commission Chairman Benedict Hur, though, also directed staff to draft new regulations to deal with future similar situations where thousands of dollars in unregulated money was spent on behalf of someone who technically wasn't a candidate. That has not happened yet.

Last fall, the media disclosed that Lee's campaign accepted sketchy donations from staffers of Go Lorrie's airport shuttle service. Last month, the company agreed to a $49,500 settlement with the state's Fair Political Practices Commission. The company and two executives face criminal charges for allegedly asking 23 employees or spouses to each make $500 contributions to Lee's campaign and then reimbursing them in cash.

The Ethics Commission is not looking into the Go Lorrie's case or a separate case of alleged money laundering to Lee's campaign, which the district attorney is investigating. St. Croix said his limited staff can best be used elsewhere if a higher authority is already handling the matter.